Two Halves
by KannaKyomu
Summary: As promised, here is the backstory behind chapter 294 of Sliding Sideways. Kikyou has lived a hard life, and in a fit of anger she makes a mistake that will irrevocably turn the tides of her purpose in the world. Three part story. Character/motivation study, because everyone has a reason.
1. Part One

AN: Taking a short break from Sliding Sideways today to bring you Part One of Two Halves, I think this will probably be a three part story as long as I don't get carried away. Please keep in mind the light I have cast on her character is more of her own internal thoughts on herself, and the way she interprets the people around her. In cannon Kikyou was hailed as some kind of prodigy according to Inuyasha, but his opinions were clouded by his feelings for her. I hope y'all enjoy, please review and let me know what you think!

* * *

Part One: All My Life I Have Been a Failure

"The tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon, but that we wait so long to begin it." - W. M. Lewis

The first time she realized it would never be enough, was during the hottest summer she had experienced in her life. The cicadas were singing, and the people of the small village were fruitlessly attempting rake at the dusty earth in the rice fields to convince some kind of yield. Young children sat in the shade cast by their parent's huts lethargically. Kikyou didn't blame them, the heat made her tired too.

Her miko garb felt scratchy against her sweat slicked skin, the sun's heat felt scorching on the back of her neck. This was the least of her worries though as she gazed out over the barren fields. If they couldn't grow rice no one would eat when the cold started to set in, if the crops were as bad as they looked there might not even be anything to eat by the end of the summer.

Their village was not a wealthy one, and she knew they wouldn't be able to buy enough to feed everyone in the coming months. With the ongoing war, and the daimyo's demands for more and more young men to serve as soldiers their work force was severely diminished. The woman and children old enough and strong enough to hold a tool worked endlessly to provide trade for the merchant caravans, but efforts were slow and the merchants few.

When the crops began to dry, and trade became less, and the rains wouldn't come the village began to look to her for solutions. She was after all the messenger of the Kami, and in their eyes she should be able to beg the deities for mercy and bring the rains back to the village. It was the first time she doubted herself, the first time she wondered if their trust in her was rightly placed. They looked upon her with hopeful eyes, and respectful words, like she had come to life with the purpose of taking all their sorrows away, healing their sick, staving off the death of their loved ones. It was a heavy burden to bear, and it was beginning to feel like a lie. Kikyou had always stood tall and proud for her village with an air of dignity that her teacher had always said was her right. But in the face of drought, which she truly could do nothing about... she crumbled on the inside.

She prayed endlessly. She meditated like she had been taught; she brought her miko ki forth to glow across her skin during the endless days and nights of sweltering heat. At first the villagers felt hope that she could bring prosperity back to their lives, but slowly as things did not improve many began to feel trepidation. Was she a false miko? Why, if she truly was a messenger of the Kami sent to earth in human form could she not convince the rains to come? Perhaps she was a weak miko, or perhaps she had become tainted with impure thoughts. As the whispers grew in numbers, so did her doubts with herself.

Resentment was the only thing that bloomed.

She sat helplessly as people she had grown with, ate with and slept by turned their backs on her.

"Child, it is not becoming for one so young to bare the eyes of one so old." Kikyou looked up from her meditation atop the shrine steps to see the gnarled old form of the village elder.

"Yahiko-sama." She greeted quietly. The old man sat beside her slowly, bones creaking and joints popping. She winced in sympathy. He placed a weathered hand over her much smaller, smoother one and gave her a knowing look. His eyes were sunken and bruised, his cheekbones prominent and his teeth nearly gone- but he was a kind old man. He had lived a long life, nearly forty-two winters and he was not ignorant in the ways of the world.

"You are doing the best you can child, if the Kami do not wish the rain then there is nothing you can do." He was the first person to tell her it was not her fault in many turns of the moon. She bowed her head, feeling helpless, angry at herself. Angry at her village.

She was tired, so very tired. She worked hard; she did everything her training had taught her to do in an event like this. But no one had prepared her for her friends and families scorn at her failure. Kikyou clenched her fist beneath the elder's hand.

She was so weak. Her shoulders shook with tears of frustration, and she promised herself this would be the last time. She wouldn't cry anymore, she would work harder and become stronger and she would bring the rain like she was supposed to.

It never did rain that year, and many died when the leaves began to change colors. Yahiko was the first of many. The old began to fall first, staving off their hunger and giving what little food there was to their families. They had had their chance at life after all and the desire to see their children and grandchildren survive was more important than their own hunger.

The babies were next, too small and too weak in the heat, their mother's milk just as dry as the land beneath them.

Kikyou dug many graves, large and small alike. Her hands were calloused and bled often, her lips were cracked and dry and her ribs became more prominent. Hunger was her only companion. Her medicines failed, her powers did nothing and the village looked at her with scorn thinly veiled under a guise of shallow respect.

It was Kikyou's ninth summer.

* * *

The second time she realized it would never be enough, solidified her place in the world in her mind's eye.

Her mother, her sweet, beautiful, delicate mother who worked so hard to build a life for Kikyou and her little sister lay dying. Her long black hair fanned around her, her eyes were closed and her breath came in shallow gasps of pain. It took all her mother's effort just to keep breathing. Her skin was as pale as the linen that she lay underneath, shallow, sickly looking skin.

The hut smelled of stale air and sharp pungent herbs. It stung her nose and made her eyes water. Kaede's soft cries filled her ears drowning out the even softer murmurs of the villagers beyond their doorway. She kneeled with her sister at her mother's side, but she didn't cry with her. She felt empty, hollow.

Her mother's belly was swollen with the child their late father had given her before he'd left them from infection. A simple accident with a farming tool, that no one realized would be his demise until after he fell ill. It hadn't even been a deep cut, it barely bled and Kikyou herself had seen to the minor wound.

Another failure to add to the list.

Her mother gasped in pain, and her eyes flew open to stare at the ceiling. Her pupils were large and dark, her back arching off the dirt floor of their hut.

Kikyou wiped a cool cloth across her mother's forehead, and the woman turned to look at her with sad, deep eyes that couldn't seem to focus. Her mother's hand came up to weakly grasp at hers, and she pleaded with her daughter.

"Kikyou, my brave girl, please." Her voice was so weak, cracking with the effort. "Please, save this baby, your old mother is trying so hard, but I fear it is not enough." The words fell heavy into the air, and even Kaede gave her a hopeful look, too young to understand.

Kikyou's throat tightened, her chest constricting around her heart. Her eyes burned but she refused to let the tears fall. She knew down to the deepest part of her that there was nothing she could do; the baby had been a breach- turned the wrong direction and trapped within her mother's belly. It had already been many days, and the likelihood that the baby was even still alive was slim. She couldn't save her sibling or her mother's life- but maybe she could give the woman some peace in her final hours. She loved her mother fiercely, and this was all she had left to give her.

"I will do everything I can." The empty promise was sour on her tongue, and she hated herself for this new failure.

Her mother lived for two more days before the afterlife took her. Kikyou would never forget the solemn look of hopelessness her mother gave her when she took the new life she had worked so hard for into death with her. Kikyou stayed by her side through the whole thing. Plying her with teas and massaging the woman's belly, having her turn this way and that in an attempt to expel that child that was killing her slowly.

It was not an uncommon occurrence in her village, and many others all around the world. Childbirth was the great hurdle of all women, their duty to bear and many did not survive it. For the first time the villager's lips were silent in this, such a common thing was to be pitied and to lay blame would be to disrespect the woman's efforts to bring new life to their village.

Somehow, Kikyou thought their silence was worse than their blame.

It was Kikyou's thirteenth winter.

Kaede never looked at her the same afterwards.

* * *

Kikyou held the glowing pink marble between delicate fingers. Her new responsibility in this life lay there innocuously, glowing in the dawn's early light. This new burden had changed the way people looked at her. Instead of scorn in their eyes, there was now fear.

Fear at what it meant for her to hold such a thing among them.

" _Demons will come."_ They whispered. She knew they were right, and the doubt lay heavy in her heart. Kikyou had grown into herself over the years of toil, heartbreak and death. She was not powerful, but she had _control._ This was how she saw herself in her sixteenth spring. A calling bird sung a high lit to its lover in a tree behind her. She heard the shuffle of cloth beside her and the brush of long silver hair.

"Inuyasha." She greeted the boy, she didn't trust him- she didn't like him, he was a _demon_ after all. But… Inuyasha treated her differently. He looked at her and spoke with her as if she did not hold the burden of every life within the village on her shoulders. He looked at her with golden eyes as lost and hopeless as her own. She got the feeling he didn't trust her either, maybe didn't like her either. Theirs was a new comradery and neither one of them was sure what to think of it yet.

Was she really so desperate in her loneliness to turn to this for company? She truly was a failure as a miko through and through. She never spoke these words of course; just another secret to keep- another reason to despise herself.

"Keh. What'r you doin' out here by yourself Kikyou? It's not safe you know." She laughed at that. Like anywhere was truly safe, but she appreciated his concern. She looped the bauble around her neck to rest atop her miko robes and stood, brushing bits of grass off.

"Inuyasha, what do you think of this life?" He looked up at her from his cross legged position in the grass with a strange light in his eyes. His lips turned down and he fiddled with his claws, considering her words.

He scowled then, tired of thinking. "It's not a very good one- but it is what it is and you learn to make the best of it." She gave him an empty smile. This was one thing she did like about the dog eared boy. In his mind, everything was only an obstacle to overcome. Everything would fall into its right place if you only worked enough- trained hard enough. She wished she could see the world through eyes like his.

"Aa." She responded absently, giving him a vague good bye and made her way back down the shrine steps into the village.

It was some weeks later that she found herself once again idly considering the pink bauble around her neck. Her dim thoughts slowly turned darker and twisted into anger the more she thought of the events that had transpired that morning.

She squeezed the marble in a fierce grip willing it to shatter into dust. It didn't, unfortunately.

Demons had come to their village seeking the very thing she held. _Demons._ It was not the first time their lives were ravaged by the beasts. They came on occasion to eat their cattle, their children, to burn their crops and plague their river. This time though- they had come because of her.

Six lives. Their village had lost six lives today, because of this stupid Shikon No Tama. Himiko the new mother and her twins who had just yesterday offered her rice at their table. Jidanbo, the strange old scraggly man that wandered about from village to village and always returned with tall tales to tell to the children that adored him. Saki and Hideki, the brother and sister that were attached at the hip that loved to offer to wash laundry for an excuse to play in the river. Four children, and two adults, gone from this world.

If it hadn't been for Inuyasha… he had taken down ten in the time it took her to shoot down three.

"Tch." She grit her teeth.

In her private corner atop the shine steps beneath her favorite tree, she hissed at the thing around her neck. Her bow felt heavy on her back some sick metaphor for her failures, her burdens.

She didn't ask for this life. She didn't ask to be a miko, she didn't want the Shikon. She didn't want anything anymore, except maybe to die a dignified death.

Her anger burned, it made her stomach twist and bile rise in her throat.

And suddenly, she couldn't _take it anymore_ , she was _done._ No more pain- no more death- everything was so-

She tore the Shikon from her neck, the cord and beaded teeth digging into her flesh with a snap.

Her power flared with her anger and she squeezed the marble again before she whirled around that _threw that damn thing_ as hard as she could with a feral scream born from bitterness.

It hit a tree with a resounding _crack._

She stood there for another moment, arm outstretched, panting. Her mouth tasted sour and her skin crawled in a dissatisfied way.

It was silent for a moment and then-

 _tink_

A soft sound of chipping glass.

She watched in rapt horror as a crack appeared down the middle of the Shikon, and it neatly split into two halves. Her anger left her suddenly, leaving her feeling cold and empty.

The two halves lay in the grass tucked into the roots of the old tree, reflecting the light of day back at her like she hadn't just shattered her only purpose in life.

She sagged, dropping her arm to her side. The long white sleeves of her miko hamaka that was the mark of her station brushed across her hands, reminding her. Kikyou stepped forward, feet pressing into the soft earth before her as she approached the thing.

She crouched and reached down, fingertips brushing the cool surface of a single half.

 _'I wish my life had some other purpose.'_ The wistful thought crossed her mind, like it had many times before, and like ink spilling into water, the broken half of the Shikon darkened.

Kikyou gasped, "What have I done?" She mournfully said to no one. She felt sick, she reached for the second half but before she could snatch it up, the earth _tilted_ underneath her.

Was she falling? She didn't think she was, but her world was very distinctly and suddenly on its side.

There was the echoing sound of another _crack_ \- only harsher this time and Kikyou found the light of the sun wasn't bright enough to see by anymore. The ground was flat and solid but not and she was falling this time, straight up- or was it down- into the dark blue of the sky. It swallowed her and a single tainted half the Shikon No Tama, leaving the other half glinting merrily on the ground in silence.


	2. Part Two

Part Two: All I've Ever Wanted Was Something With Meaning

"To see a world in a grain of sand, and heaven in a wildflower; hold Infinity in the palm of your hand, and eternity in an hour." -William Blake

* * *

The first time he realized the only thing that mattered, were the things that lasted forever; was in the coldest winter of his life. He tugged at his threadbare scarf, attempting to pull the thin material tighter around himself. He grunted when his foot fell into a too-deep snow drift along the side of the road. He tugged the limb free after a moment, but it left his pant leg wet and uncomfortable. He was exhausted, the journey was long and his tanned skin wasn't used to such extreme cold.

He grit his teeth in frustration, blinking back tears of bitterness and trotted to catch up with his father who had continued to walk without stopping for him. Such was father's way, if he was strong he would make it and if he was weak he would die. He hated this man.

Mother had been weak, father told him when he'd asked. But Kakuzu knew the truth, of the three of them mother had been the strongest, she shone the brightest- her bravery something he'd always looked up to. He had once told himself that he wanted to be just like her. Now she was dead, and that didn't sound particularly appealing so he was forced to reevaluate the thought. His mind felt just as cold as the air around him. He was empty, everything he knew up until this point had been tipped and poured from his life like a kettle down the drain.

Even in death she had been beautiful. Her body drooped limply from the balcony railing, her long black hair so much like his carried along in the breeze. Her wide green eyes were cloudy and they lacked the emotions that she normally displayed for him so freely. Her eyes stared into his, unblinking and hollow. His mind replayed the last minute of her life over and over until he was sure his heart must be bleeding inside his chest and he would soon follow her into death just to escape the agony of his broken heart.

 _Her hand reached for him with her last breath, fingers dripping with crimson liquid. As the luster left her eyes, he found he couldn't move, although he desperately wanted to- he wanted her to hold him; feel her embrace him one last time. Just this one last time. He wanted her to tell him this was a dream, just like all the others- that he would wake up soon and everything would be okay._

 _"Kakuzu, my beloved little anemon, mother will love you always... live for me, Kakuzu... live and be... happy..."_

He loved his mother very much, she had always been there for him. Every step, every word, every dream. It had been such a fleeting happiness in his life, his beautiful mother.

Kakuzu stumbled and fell, his body hit the ground hard enough to have his breath leave his lungs. He lay still for a moment, watching fathers form disappear into the swirling snow that fell in heavy curtains. Maybe it would be better if he did die here. He could see mother again... after all, death was the only thing that really lasted forever.

He hated life. He hated how he had loved her, he hated all this fleeting garbage that never lasted. A foot connected solidly with his ribs and he was sure he heard a crack. He coughed hard, the agony of pain bringing him back to reality.

"Get up." Father's harsh voice grated in his ears over the howl of the snow storm. Most of all Kakuzu firmly decided, he hated father. This ugly man who had killed his only happiness in life.

And for what? _Money_.

Money is the only thing that matters in this world, his father had said. And Kakuzu had regretfully agreed. Because money certainly seemed to outlive everything he had once thought mattered.

It was Kakuzu's fourth winter.

* * *

There were two things he decided that he would uphold above all else. Because they would be forever- and things that lasted forever couldn't _leave_ you.

Kakuzu gave his loyalty freely to the village of Hidden Waterfall. Takigakure itself he knew would never last. Clay would crumble, plaster would mold and the lives within would perish. There was something more to Taki though, something intangible that once planted would only grow and flourish, something that couldn't be killed with a simple kunai or powerful jutsu.

Ideals.

Taki had ideals; some were good, and some not so much- but it didn't matter to Kakuzu. Morality never really played a part in what he gave his loyalty too as long as it would last he would be content to bask in the shadow of what he once thought of as happiness. Somewhere in an ignored and abandoned part of his mind, he knew this was not happiness, but his life was already worthless so he chose not to care.

He rolled to the ground beneath a grand fireball his Uchiha opponent was attempting to cook him alive with.

"Tch." This kid would have a long way to go before he could go toe-to-toe with a jounin like himself. Kakuzu was the fastest shinobi in his village, and he used this skill with pride in the name of Hidden Waterfall. He sprung to his feet, using chakra to coat the soles of his shoes- he pushed off leaving cracked earth in his wake. His kunai cut through the Uchiha's neck like butter. Tendons, bone and flesh meant nothing- worthless, temporary.

Kakuzu hated these fleeting things with a sensation that burned in his chest, made his throat feel tight and his body ache. This life was no different from the plethora of others he had taken for the glory of his home. In his wake he left a trail of broken bodies, and in his palm was the coin that was always the same. For every life he took, every ugly thing he brought death upon; there would be money in his pocket. This was the second of his own ideals.

Nothing else mattered, there was only him in his great, gnawing, empty heartedness, his beliefs that gave him a sense of loyalty to his village, and money.

It was his ninth winter as a shinobi of Takigakure, and his fourteenth in this world.

* * *

Kakuzu contemplated the new bands that circled his wrists and forearms, branding him forever as a criminal. He let the limbs fall limply back into his lap, peering into the dark of his cell. The air smelled of mold and rotting corpses. His own corpse would add the ambient nature of this place soon enough.

How had this happened? How had it come to this? He was willing to give his village everything; his time, his chakra, his life- his _money_. Everything.

And yet, here he was scorned for his failure to kill Senju Hashirama despite the risk he'd taken, the ideals he'd upheld in Taki's name. Kakuzu never felt so betrayed in his life. Thirteen winters as a Taki shinobi, and eighteen in this world, all his toils and efforts thrown to the dogs.

Perhaps his father had been right all along. A small piece of something within him that he had long forgotten died with this thought. He was left feeling more empty than he ever had before.

But that wasn't entirely true was it? No, there was the _rage_. The cold hatred that filled him, and the burning anger that made him stand from the filthy floor; his thirst and hunger forgotten.

The village elders died that night. Their empty unseeing eyes and hollowed out chests did nothing to assuage the betrayal they'd carved into him. But he would take their hearts with him when he left, it was the least they could do to rectify that damage they'd wrought with their actions.

Kakuzu walked out of Takigakure feeling like half a human, and half something else. He supposed he hadn't really felt whole in a long time, perhaps this was just his outsides matching his insides now.

In the year that followed his defection, he became a master only to himself. He did as he pleased, when he wanted, where he wanted. This sense of freedom did little to burn away the void within him, but the money seemed to help.

It was on one such bounty hunt, a particularly grueling one that had him chasing down some trash of a human; that he inadvertently saved a woman's life.

She was strange, her dialect was completely off- some lit he'd never heard before, and the air about her just seemed to... shimmer somehow with a power he could not name.

His interest was piqued. It was the first time, in a long time that he thought about something other than money.


End file.
